Berthold Rittberger

Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich | LMU · Geschwister-Scholl-Institut für Politikwissenschaft

It is widely acknowledged that the core institutions of the Liberal International Order (LIO) have in recent years been subject to increasingly intense contestation. There is less agreement on the sources of this contestation. This introductory paper to the Special Issue on "contestation in a world of liberal orders" makes two main contributions. F...

Throughout the past decades, the EU's agency landscape has continuously expanded in size and scope. In this article, we address the lack of longitudinal data on EU agencies' formal independence. We introduce a newly revised index to measure the formal independence of EU agencies from other EU institutions over time. Applying a rules‐as‐data approac...

In light of the German government’s long-held preference against EU-wide fiscal burden-sharing, a hallmark of the Euro crisis, its support for an EU-wide debt-instrument during the COVID-19 pandemic constitutes a dramatic policy U-turn. To make sense of the ‘Berlin puzzle’, we develop a theoretical mechanism that explores why an initially reluctant...

The European Semester (ES) is a centre-piece of the EU’s evolving economic governance architecture and its democratic legitimacy and accountability has been contested in pre- and post- pandemic times. This paper introduces two perspectives – a democratic and a technocratic perspective – to evaluate the accountability of the ES, based on a survey of...

In the European Union (EU), blame games have become a regular feature of EU politics. A fast-growing literature studies political actors’ blame avoidance and blame generation strategies in the EU. Thanks to this literature, we possess ample knowledge about the strategies political actors employ when playing European blame games. We introduce a new...

The Court of Justice of the European Union has long been considered a steadfast advocate and engine of the constitutionalization of the European Union. More recently, however, critical voices about the Court’s seemingly deferential stance on executive (crisis) governance have amplified among legal scholars and political scientists. We take issue wi...

The Liberal International Order (LIO) is under pressure from various angles. To account for this phenomenon, a recent trend is to focus on endogenous sources of contestation-institutional properties of the order that create negative feedback effects. In this article, we seize on and extend an endogenous explanation centring on the LIO's political s...

Der zentrale Untersuchungsgegenstand der Europaforschung in den Internationalen Beziehungen (IB) ist die Erklärung politischer Integration, d. h. die Übertragung staatlicher Hoheitsrechte auf die supranationale Ebene. Die zur Erklärung politischer Integration entwickelten Integrationstheorien sind aufgrund ihres Erkenntnisinteresses – zwischenstaat...

The chapter describes and explains vertical and horizontal integration and differentiation as related to the Single Market. After sketching out the historical development of this core area of European integration, we test the explanatory power of the four integration theories covered in this book, by applying them to selected steps of market integr...

This chapter introduces intergovernmentalism as a theory of European integration. We begin the presentation of intergovernmentalism by explicating its theoretical roots in rationalist institutionalism in International Relations and by identifying four more middle-range rationalist theories that intergovernmentalism uses to explain international coo...

The concluding chapter will, in a first step, systematically review and compare the findings of the book’s empirical chapters on the single market, the EMU, defence policy, and the AFSJ. The empirical material will then be used to contrast the performance of the different integration theories discussed in this book, intergovernmentalism, supranatio...

This chapter introduces constructivism as a theory of European integration. While intergovernmentalism, but also supranationalism emphasize the causal relevance of (material) structures and interests, constructivism stipulates that social structures—ideas, collective identities, and discourses—matter for European integration. This chapter first int...

This chapter describes and explains the differentiated vertical and horizontal integration of macroeconomic policy in the EU, comprising both monetary and fiscal policy. Apart from their obvious political relevance for the EU, European monetary and fiscal policy offer rich and interesting data for the study of differentiated integration. First, mon...

Far from displaying a uniform pattern, European integration varies significantly across policy areas and individual countries. Why do some policies, such as the Single Market, attract non-EU member states, while some member states choose to opt out of specific EU policies? Why are some policies deeply integrated, whereas others, such as defence, re...

Postfunctionalism is the most recent addition to the canon of major integration theories. It agrees with the sociological-institutionalist assumption that jurisdictions build on communities of common culture and identity. Postfunctionalism further starts from the assumption that regional integration has become firmly embedded in the democratic mass...

Despite the attempt to create a European Defence Community in the 1950s today security and defence policy cooperation in the EU is only weakly vertically integrated and horizontally differentiated. This chapter will first chart the development of security and defence policy cooperation from the 1950s to the present. The second part of the chapter w...

This chapter introduces supranationalism, which has its roots in neofunctionalism, the first fully developed theory of European integration. Supranationalism argues that transnational society and supranational organizations are the most relevant actors, often pushing European integration beyond the level governments had originally intended. Suprana...

Chapter 2 proposes to conceptualize the EU as a system of differentiated integration and describes its historic development. We show, first, that the Community has significantly expanded its tasks and competences since its inception; this is what we call ‘vertical integration’. Second, we highlight that the expansion of membership in EU policies (i...

The chapter describes and explains vertical and horizontal integration and differentiation as related to the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ). After sketching out the historical development of this at first belated and later stunningly dynamic area of European integration, we test the explanatory power of the four integration theories c...

The delegation of governance tasks to third parties is generally assumed to help governments to avoid blame once policies become contested. International organizations, including the European Union (EU), are considered particularly opportune in this regard. The literature lacks assessments of the blame avoidance effects of delegation, let alone of...

This chapter introduces the EU as a regional organization that is unprecedented regarding the scope and depth of regional integration. After providing a sketch of the EU’s policy and decision-making prerogatives, the chapter presents the main EU integration theories, liberal intergovernmentalism, supranationalism, and postfunctionalism. To illustra...

Die EU ist heute regelmäßig Gegenstand politischer Kontroversen. Der Brexit, die Euro- und Migrationskrise, aber auch die graduelle Erosion der Demokratie in Polen und Ungarn sind zu Chiffren eines zentralen Dilemmas europäischer Politik im 21. Jahrhundert geworden: Kann europäische Kooperation mit der vielerorts lauter werdenden Forderung nach dem...

The politicisation of the EU renders blame avoidance for unpopular EU policies an essential task for governments. This article looks at one particular blame avoidance strategy, which governments have at their disposal in the EU policy process: the threat of non-compliance. In order to gauge its effectiveness, we present two competing arguments. Acc...

The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has long been considered a steadfast advocate andengine of the constitutionalization of the European Union (EU). More recently, however, critical voicesabout the Court’s seemingly deferential stance on executive (crisis) governance have amplified amonglegal scholars and political scientists. We take...

The liberal international order (LIO) is experiencing a legitimacy crisis in its Western heartland. What causes this crisis? Existing approaches focus on the LIO's unequal allocation of wealth and values that produces losers and thus breeds dissatisfaction. Yet, why this dissatisfaction translates into a delegitimation of the order rather than a co...

The collective concerns of this Special Issue are twofold. First, it advances possible explanations of how the Brexit issue arose. Why was Britain’s membership of the EU thought to be so problematic for so many members of the British political elite and ultimately for a majority of voters? In a nutshell, how did we get to June 2016 and the Brexit R...

In the past decades, the EU has witnessed a remarkable rise in the number of specialized regulatory agencies and European regulatory networks (ERN). Regulatory governance in the EU does not, however, present policymakers with a binary choice of either opting for agencies or ERNs, to address competence-control trade-offs, which underpin the governor...

Blame games between governing and opposition parties are a characteristic feature of domestic politics. In the EU, policymaking authority is shared among multiple actors across different levels of governance. How does EU integration affect the dynamics of domestic blame games? Drawing on the literatures on EU politicisation and blame attribution in...

Together with its further widening and deepening, the character of the EU has changed fundamentally during the last two decades. Acknowledging this development, the politics-dimension has become visibly more relevant in research on the EU. This “politics turn” is accompanied by an increased interest in research on political behavior of individual a...

Since the launch of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) in 2004, scholars have extensively analysed whether the EU’s external governance strategy is effective. In this paper, we propose a change in perspective and argue that domestic policy change in third countries is not merely a possible outcome of the EU-third state cooperation, but also a...

The new European Union (EU) is characterised by the simultaneity of continuing integration and obvious trends of disintegration. This volume examines the reasons for this new simultaneity and what it means for the process of integration.

This paper develops a theory of wedge issue politics in modern democracies. It argues that wedge issues are associated with a politics of intransigence which differs from the politics of concessions that typically comes with non-wedge issues. This theory explains why Prime Minister Theresa May opted for a divisive approach to secure ratification of...

Who is held publicly responsible for mistakes in EU policies? We argue that in complex policy-making systems responsibility tends to be attributed to implementing actors. To test this expectation, we analyse public responsibility attributions (PRAs) for two alleged mistakes in EU financial policies: The absence of sanctions against countries that v...

This article introduces a collection of papers devoted to the study of secrecy in European politics across a range of EU and national settings and policy domains. Academic interest in secret politics – those aspects of public activity intentionally concealed from the public eye – and the governance of secrecy – the political processes and regulator...

The objective of this contribution is to account for the different political reform trajectories resulting from two of the most recent governance challenges faced by the European Union (EU), the so-called euro and refugee crises. While the euro crisis triggered various EU-level reforms, the refugee crisis has produced calls for policy and instituti...

Der zentrale Untersuchungsgegenstand der Europaforschung in den Internationalen Beziehungen ist die Erklärung politischer Integration, d. h. die Übertragung von staatlichen Hoheitsrechten auf die supranationale Ebene. Drei unterschiedliche Denkschulen – Intergouvernementalismus, Supranationalismus (bzw. Neofunktionalismus) und Konstruktivismus – do...

This chapter extends an explanation based on constitutional preferences to reform opportunities arising from the crisis- driven reforms of the EU’sEconomic and Monetary Union (EMU). Parliamentary parties had to decide on parliamentary rights in decision-making of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM). Moreover, the Treaty on Stability, Coordinatio...

For the very first time in EU history, the 2014 EP elections provided citizens with the opportunity to influence the nomination of the Commission President by casting a vote for the main Europarties’ ‘lead candidates’. By subjecting the position of the Commission President to an open political contest, many experts have formulated the expectation t...

Who is held publicly responsible for the policies of international institutions? Are member states or supranational bodies held responsible or are public responsibility attributions (PRA) untargeted? We argue that in complex policy-making systems responsibility tends to be attributed to implementing actors. When, however, a policy does not require...

In the run-up to the elections to the European Parliament in 2014, EU citizens had the unprecedented opportunity to watch televised debates between the candidates running for president of the European Commission. The most important debate was the so-called “Eurovision debate”, which was broadcasted in almost all EU member states. In this study we e...

Regional institutions across the globe wield influence and hence impact constituent states and citizens both inside and outside their respective regions. As a consequence, regional institutions are increasingly confronted with concerns that the power wielded is deemed legitimate. This chapter takes the distinction between normative and empirical co...

The euro crisis is marked by the intensification of intergovernmental policy coordination, an increasing asymmetry in European parliamentarism, a growing integration and legitimacy gap in the EU, and the politicization of integration. The crisis has confirmed and reinforced existing dynamics, rather than producing structural breaks or new developme...

As a consequence of the euro crisis, economic and fiscal policy-making competencies have been transferred to the EU-level. At the same time, national parliaments have seen their capacity to influence the policies to combat the crisis curbed. This contribution explores the reaction of national parliaments to the crisis and demonstrates stark variati...

Drawing on an original dataset covering more than 100 political parties in over 20 European Union Member States, this article analyses how political recruitment procedures affect the proportion of women nominated on party lists in the context of the 2009 European Parliament elections. The findings show that the inclusiveness of the selectorates in...

This contribution conceptualizes the European Union (EU) as a system of differentiated integration characterized by both variation in levels of centralization (vertical differentiation) and variation in territorial extension (horizontal differentiation) across policy areas. Differentiation has been a concomitant of deepening and widening and has in...

Governance through EU regulatory networks is a compelling example of orchestration: the European Commission enlists regulatory networks as intermediaries to achieve regulatory governance goals, rather than pursuing these goals by itself. Our contribution addresses two key issues central to the orchestration framework. First, why does one of the mos...

Decision-making between the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament is characterized by a paradox. On the one hand, there is a high potential for inter-institutional conflict. Historically, the EP and the Council have been opponents in the struggle for power. In addition, both institutions can be said to fulfill different representational...

The euro crisis is marked by the intensification of intergovernmental policy coordination, an increasing asymmetry in European parliamentarism, a growing integration and legitimacy gap in the EU, and the politicization of integration. The crisis has confirmed and reinforced existing dynamics, rather than producing structural breaks or new developme...

As a consequence of the euro crisis, economic and fiscal policy-making competencies have been transferred to the EU-level. At the same time, national parliaments have seen their capacity to influence the policies to combat the crisis curbed. This contribution explores the reaction of national parliaments to the crisis and demonstrates stark variati...

European regulatory networks (ERNs) play a central role in the formulation, deliberation, and implementation of EU policies and have, thus, become objects of investigation in a fast-growing scholarly literature. We identify two shortcomings – one conceptual, one theoretical – in the literature on ERNs: First, we argue that the principal–agent appro...

While the Lisbon Treaty has been heralded as victory for the European Parliament, the crisis-related reforms of the European Union's economic governance regime are commonly being considered to have empowered governments and supranational institutions – such as the Commission and ECB – at the expense of the EP and national parliaments. This article...

https://www.ihs.ac.at/publications/pol/pw_137.pdf

European regulatory networks (ERNs) play a central role in the formulation, deliberation and implementation of EU policies and have thus become objects of investigation in fast growing scholarly literature. We identify two shortcomings – one conceptual, one theoretical – in the literature on ERNs: First, we argue that the principal-agent approach,...

The European Parliament (EP) has one of the highest proportions of women in its ranks, with over a third in 2009. Although previous research has pointed to the use of proportional representation (PR) in European elections as ‘friendlier’ to women, few have looked at differences in the types of PR rules in use in each country. In this article, we ar...

Der zentrale Untersuchungsgegenstand der Europaforschung in den Internationalen Beziehungen ist die Erklärung politischer Integration, d. h. die Übertragung von staatlichen Hoheitsrechten auf die supranationale Ebene. Drei unterschiedliche Denkschulen – Intergouvernementalismus, Supranationalismus (bzw. Neofunktionalismus) und Konstruktivismus – do...

The Southern Common Market (Mercosur), the world’s fourth-largest trading bloc, represents an intriguing yet under-researched case of a regional organization which has made significant advances in regional integration in the past decades, legalization being a central dimension of its integration process. In 2002, Mercosur’s dispute settlement syste...

The Southern Common Market (Mercosur), the world's fourth-largest trading bloc, represents an intriguing yet under-researched case of a regional organization which has made significant advances in regional integration in the past decades, legalization being a central dimension of its integration process. In 2002, Mercosur's dispute settlement syste...

The Lisbon Treaty has led to an expansion of the rights of parliaments in scrutinizing EU decision making, including—for the first time—also regional parliaments. Yet, theoretically informed empirical work on how regional legislatures adapt to the increasing relevance of the EU for subnational jurisdictions remains scarce. Drawing on data from an o...

As political authority is successively transferred from the national to the EU level, national parliaments are often considered to lose control over the domestic political agenda. Yet recent studies suggest that national parliaments cannot simply be labelled ‘losers’ of European integration. National parliaments have institutionally adapted to the...

Representative democracy has been accorded constitutional status with the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty. The European Parliament (EP) and the history of its empowerment embody this constitutional principle and its gradual institutionalization. To shed light on the EP's empowerment and the institutionalization of the principle of representat...

The European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) marks a milestone in international cooperation as it represents the first supranational treaty organisation in history: The national governments of France, Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries decided to delegate domestic decisionmaking authority in the coal and steel sectors to a new supranational o...

European Union (EU)-level agencies have emerged as important actors on the EU's policy-making scene. To date, we know relatively little about the personnel working in EU agencies: what attitudes do EU agency staff members hold on issue-dimensions relevant for the EU integration process? How do they perceive of their role in EU policy-making? Moreov...

The literature on European Union (EU) agencies has proliferated rapidly since the first essay collection on EU agencies was published by the Journal of European Public Policy in 1997. This collection picks up three thematic threads contained in the initial collection and provides state-of-the-art treatises on these different themes. The first theme...

The delegation of policy-making tasks to EU agencies and their remarkable growth in number over the past two decades mark a striking new development in the EU's institutional make-up. While most of the nascent literature on the EU's ‘agencification’ addresses the conditions for agency creation and the implications of agency governance from the pers...